Restore active directory from backup

[Guest]

I have an odd question regarding restoring the directory from a restore.
Were preparing to upgrade the domain to Windows 2003 and we want to test the
upgrade in our lab.

In order to get the directory in our lab (isolated from our prod network),
i'm trying to restore the directory from a backup of the system state of
production server to similar hardware (exactly the same) in the lab and i'm
running to problems. THese are the steps i'm following:
(1) Bulding the lab server with the same config as the prod server
(2) Installing the AD in the lab with the same name as the prod AD
(3) Restore the directory from the system state onto the lab server

I did see the databases and logs going into the same location after the
restore ran which is a good sign. When I restart after the backup, I run
into error 0xc0002e1 after the server reboots and when trying to prepare
network connections, with the only option to restart the pc.

Here is my question(s): is it possible to perform a restore like this and if
so, what am I doing wrong. I made the lab server IP's the same as the prod
but didnt make the site name the same.

Thanks any help and info.

Jeff

 

[Paul Bergson]

You could install the server into production, dcpromo it, do an ntbackup,
dcpromo it out of the domain, move the server to the test domain and restore
the server from the ntbackup. This is what we do and it works well. Just
make sure to cleanup dns. This works really well if you use integrated dns
and you have dns running on this dc


Note: Just because you name the server the same name, it isn't going to
work the guid's and sid's aren't the same, etc...

 

[Guest]

Thanks Paul.

That was my my next plan of attack. I just dont like throwing a server into
the production if I dont need to.

When I move the server out of the prod domain and restore from backup, do I
need to run a dcpromo aagin in the lab before I restore from backup? That is
where I think i'm running into trouble.

Thanks again.

Jeff